FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a system for transporting persons and/or goods in a plurality of vehicles each equipped with running wheels; the vehicles are connectable to a continuously moving traction cable whereby they can be driven along a track, specifically along rails, wherein there are deceleration and/or acceleration wheels in boarding areas and/or alighting stations where the vehicles can be disconnected from the traction cable; the deceleration and/or acceleration wheels can be brought into contact with the vehicles, whereby their driving speed is reduced or increased.
A system of that type is disclosed in European patent publication EU A1 673 817, wherein the vehicles--after the passengers have boarded the vehicle at the first station--are brought up to the speed of the traction cable by means of the acceleration wheels and then they latch on to the traction cable. They are then conveyed to the second station by means of the traction cable, which moves at a speed of, for instance, 8 m/sec. In the second station, the vehicles, after having been disconnected from the traction cable, are slowed down by means of the deceleration wheels to a speed of less than 0.5 m/sec, such that the passengers can board or alight from them.
This technique is already known from cable car systems, hereby the successive wheels are driven in the segments of acceleration and deceleration at decreasing and increasing peripheral speeds respectively, wherein only one acceleration wheel or deceleration wheel takes effect at any one time on the running gear of the cable car. However, it is not possible to transfer this technique to systems having vehicles that are several meters in length because this would require extremely long deceleration and acceleration segments.
For this reason, it would appear possible to drive all the wheels of the deceleration segment or of the acceleration segment at the same decreasing or increasing peripheral speeds, wherein the peripheral speed of the deceleration wheels--after these take over the vehicles that have been disconnected from the traction cable--is reduced from the speed of the traction cable to that speed at which the passengers can board or alight from the vehicles, or, in case of transfer of the vehicles from the boarding/alighting area, the peripheral speed of the acceleration wheels is increased from the boarding/alighting speed to the speed of the traction cable, at which point the vehicles can be connected to the traction cable. However, the drawback with this technique is that only one vehicle can be in the segments for deceleration or for acceleration at any one time, which greatly limits the number of vehicles that can be operated in such a system.